Google. [Don't?] be evil.

Today we will deal with the topic of Google. Is the “Don't be evil” slogan still valid? Or maybe only “be evil” remains? You will see my point on this subject in the text below. Have a nice reading!

For starters: dry facts

Google was founded on September 24, 1998

It was founded by two PhD students from Stanford University – American Larry Page and Russian Sergey Brin.

In December 2018, Google (Alphabet Inc.) employs 98 771 employees.

The best-known services offered by the company are Google search engine and AdWords and AdSense advertising services, which are the company's main sources of profit.

The name “Google” comes from the incorrect entry of the word “googol”.

The slogan “Don't be evil” disappeared in a publicly available code of conduct around April / May 2018...

Don't be... well, don't be what?

At the beginning of its existence, Google signed the motto “Don't be evil.” Well, “signed”. The past tense. What happened to the company for 21 years that simply didn't want to be “evil”?

A lot has happened since 1998. Google has become the most popular search engine (75% of the market), Google Chrome has taken over almost 62.6% of the general market and 69.5% of the computer market, and YouTube generates almost 2 billion hits per month. I don't have to say which maps are the most popular. As the friendly neighbor spider used to say: “great power comes with great responsibility,” and Google has a lot of power. Very high power.

Google dominated the internet. And like any large company, Google makes mistakes. The only question is – which are accidentally and which are made specially?

Monopolistic tendencies

Google has long been a selective approach to ethics, which has already led to the imposition of penalties by the European Union totaling several billion. The main caveat was to place their services higher than competitive services, and thus the abuse of monopoly power.

Also in the case of monopolistic practices, Google had to add an easy change of browser and search engine on Android – now the first time the phone asks us what we want to install.

Tracking, eavesdropping, data collection...

Google has a few more crimes on its account. For example, it collects location data from phones. Even if we turn off the location remembering option. What's more, even turning off location in your phone settings will not help. Google somehow knows everything about you.

You can find out how much Google knows about you by going to the panel on this page.

And in all this the worst is...

And the worst part is that Google gets us used to it every day. Every day we become more and more addicted to its services and applications. We often avoid substitutions because of habits. We have prejudices about the substitutes, we believe that we will not find anything better. We sell our privacy for a better interface. We give away petabytes of data for several pixels.